Thomas Aquinas — "Strictly speaking, woman is a monster of nature."
Strictly speaking, woman is a monster of nature.
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Details
Commentary on Aristotle's On the Generation of Animals, reflecting Aristotle's view of women as 'mas occasionatus'
Date: c. 1260s
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The word 'monster' here means deviation from an intended form, not a creature of horror. Drawing from Aristotelian biology, Aquinas argues that nature's goal in reproduction is to produce a male; a female results when that process is deflected. Woman is therefore a biological departure from the natural norm — an 'aberration' in the strict Aristotelian sense of failing to fully realize the intended end.
Relevance to Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas systematically reconciled Aristotle with Catholic theology. His Summa Theologica borrows Aristotle's claim that females are 'defective males' — 'mas occasionatus.' This framing underpinned his theological conclusions that women could not receive holy orders or hold teaching authority in the Church. For Aquinas, biological hierarchy directly justified ecclesiastical and social hierarchy, making this no casual remark but a foundational premise.
The era
In 13th-century scholastic Europe, Aristotle's biology was treated as empirical truth. Universities like Paris and Bologna taught the 'defective male' theory as natural philosophy. Women were legally barred from universities, property ownership, and church leadership. Aquinas was not being provocative — he was articulating consensus science of his day, which the Church had absorbed and which would remain influential in canon law for centuries.
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